Future of Fake News

The future of fake news

 

Fake news has become one of the most talked about topics as of late. It changed the course of the United States presidential election. A countless amount of fake news for each candidate possibly changed the outcome of this election. Fake news is not limited to government, in one of my earlier post, I talked about TMZ reporting on "animal abuse" on the set of "A Dog's Purpose". This story made people boycott the movie even though the claims of animal abuse were false. Fake news can affect anything in today’s world. Fake news has already had such an impact, what does the future have in store for fake news?

 

No one can really say for sure what fake news will do and affect, but we can give it our best shot. With fake news already having a huge impact on today’s world, I don't see it going anywhere, anytime soon. I predict that fake news will continue to impact our government elections, no matter what level of government it is or what election it is. The election could be for class president at a high school, fake news, or "gossip" in this case, can affect the election. Now that fake news has made such an impact, it will be used until it is proven not to be effective.

In an article written by Clea Simmons on the Harvard Gazette, titled “Fake news is giving reality a run for its money”. It reported on a Harvard panel on March 23^rd 2017, including Jonathan Zittrain, Xiao Mina, MIT Ph.D. Candidate Nathan Matias, and Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School. The panel was tasked with discussing fake news and how to react to it.

 

(Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer)

Jonathan Zittrain (right) Xiao Mina (Middle)

Nathan Matias (left) Martha Minow (right of Nathan)

 

                These people are asked questions about fake news, each giving their definition of it. They eventually get to what to do about it. Minow pointed out that propaganda has been around forever, which could be called fake news. Mina responded with “it is necessary to understand how fake news spreads — the “cultural logic” that makes it attractive to a particular audience”. I agree with the statement, if you do not understand how fake news spreads then there is little you can do to separate it from actual news. The panelist said that the news organizations themselves can strengthen both their practices and their readers’ trust with transparency. Xiao Mina’s firm is working on check, a collaborative verification of digital media that has already been used by organizations such as ProPublica and Amnesty International.

I Believe that fake news will forever be in our lives now. It has shown to be an extremely effective tool for government elections and will most likely be used in further elections. Now just because Fake news will most likely never go away, that does not mean that there is not anything we can do to stop the spread of fake news. We can fact check new stories, we can research further in to the topic, search the authors name in google and see what other articles come up. There are a multitude of ways to stop fake news, all we have to do is use them.